Why do people assume that gifted students breeze through
school and life without effort or care?
In a society that is so keenly aware of the challenges and needs of
students with disabilities why does our empathy dissipate when the topic of
giftedness enters the conversation? When
a parent says, “Joey is struggling in school because he is on the autism
spectrum, do you ever hear fellow parents reply, “That’s a great problem to
have”? Can you imagine the outrage if
someone had the audacity to respond in such a callous manner? Aren’t gifted learners simply outliers on the
opposite end of the spectrum requiring the same appropriate accommodations as
special needs students? Is it a lack of
knowledge about the struggles of gifted students that allows people to react
with such indifference to the needs of a child with different abilities? Do we need to change the label to something
less controversial? By calling these
statistical outliers “gifted” do we alienate parents who rightly state that all
children have gifts? What label would
be more palatable while acknowledging the statistical anomaly that is a gifted
student? Why don’t people have the same
visceral reaction to “special” needs?
Does this label make our children any less special?
I feel the need to preface this statement by saying, no, I
am not bragging anymore than a parent with an autistic child is bragging when
they acknowledge their child’s differences.
My son is a gifted child. To be
honest, there are moments when I wish he was just an average kid with average
intelligence and average problems. I
wish that seams in socks and the tightness of his shoes didn’t result in
meltdowns of epic proportions on a daily basis.
When I point out the big moon to my toddler and he explains in excruciating
detail how the moon does not actually change size, it is just our perception of
the size based on it’s location in the sky, I wonder how different his life
would be if he were more naïve. I watch
him struggle to relate to kids in his class who fail to appreciate his intense
fascination with black holes. (I’m an
adult and I find myself overwhelmed at times.)
When parents drop him off after a lunch date with a friend I never hear
he was a great kid and we had fun, instead they say, “He read the whole menu!!!
How did you get him to do that?” Um,
well, I didn’t get him to do
anything…he kind of came this way. His
teachers have described him as precocious and quirky since he entered
pre-school. I am beginning to wonder, if
at seven years old he is beginning to feel different…like he doesn’t quite fit
in. Even among the “math club” kids I
get strange looks and questions from parents who find it disconcerting to meet
a 2nd grader who understands prime and composite numbers.
I have included the chart below to help distinguish between bright students and gifted students.
I have included the chart below to help distinguish between bright students and gifted students.
The struggles of gifted children are well documented. I
watched a video this week, “The Struggles of the Gifted Child” (
http://www.bradmasoncounselor.com/the-gifted-childs-struggle/ ), that spoke to
the challenges I have listed below. The
video is a monologue by Brad Mason followed by interviews with gifted adults
who talk about their experience. It is
not a great resource for accommodating gifted students, but it is a great way
to gain some insight into the life of a gifted child and a means to
understanding why they are the way they are.
The same gift of perception that enables them to learn
quickly, solve problems and understand abstract ideas makes them keenly aware
of seams, tags, noise, and the problems and injustice in the world. They experience things more intensely than
others. My son has described ill-fitting
clothes as painful and in researching giftedness it would appear that he might
actually perceive that itchy tag as painful.
They hunger for information, learning everything they can about a topic. I gave my son a question book so we won’t
“lose his thought” before I have time to look up the answers to his ponderings.
They can have imaginations that seem
more real to them than the world we live in, and they are intensely emotional
and tuned in to the feelings of others.
Many gifted children struggle socially and lag behind their peers in
physical development. They tend to be
perfectionists with a tendency to self criticize. The smallest imperfection in their work is
perceived as a catastrophic failure of the entire project. Days of work on a Lego project will be
hastily destroyed if even one part fails to meet his expectations. They tend to be viewed as rude (correcting
adults…even when you have the right information…is a tough sell when you are
less than three feet tall), bossy, and demanding. Put simply, they are a lot of work…for
parents and teachers. The best part of
the video is when Brad Mason describes the parents of gifted children as
“exhausted”. I think that may also
describe his teacher by the end of the day. For parents of special needs children there are IEP's, specialists and accommodations. Administrators and teachers work with the families to arrange services and try to make things work for the student. Gifted children have none of those resources or accommodations. They are left to flounder while their parents struggle to provide enrichment activities outside of school to counteract the six hours of boredom they endured at school. To the people who say, "That's a great problem to have", I would like to point out that it is an expensive problem to have. There is no funding for gifted education, gifted schools or enrichment opportunities. When you approach a school to advance a child a grade level you meet fierce resistance based on social needs, however many parents keep a child out of kindergarten to give them another year to mature and are never questioned or required to place them in their age appropriate classroom. The rules are skewed to accommodate only one side of the curve.
I think it is important for educators to understand that
being gifted is not without its challenges and without accommodation gifted
students are prone to frustration, underachievement and eventually to dropping
out of school.
Gifted learners can be accommodated in many ways. Brad Mason suggested two categories based on
a child’s skills and interests. He
suggests accelerated learning for students who are high achievers, who do well
in school process information easily and have great memories. This type of student is prone to frustration
when held back and enjoys achieving the next level. For passionate, imaginative students who
enjoy the process of and are not motivated by grades he suggests an enriched
curriculum that allows the students to immerse themselves in a subject and
become an expert on the topic. I posted
another resource for working with gifted students on my Pinterest account. You can link to that website and a few others
I utilize often below:
The book reviewed here speaks to the isolation of our gifted
students who don’t fit in with their chronological peers or curriculum and
society’s hesitation to “push” them ahead because they are not socially ready.
This is a great resource for curriculum resources for gifted
students…let’s hope there is a budget for this by the time we start teaching!
More great resources:
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